How can asset managers best leverage their market research capabilities
(on themselves) to gain strategic value/benefit?
Over the years, we have learned that there are six fundamental elements that can contribute to winning in the financial services industry – all of which begin by taking a deep dive and looking outside:
Sharpen your external focus: Winning in your market means knowing what’s happening beyond your purview. It means understanding what your clients need and value most; understanding your competitors, their position, and what they can and cannot do; and developing insights that allow you to be proactive and thoughtful in your decision-making.
Commit to a competitive mindset: This begins with having the desire to win—and then developing the strategies and putting in the hard work that will allow you to perform at your highest level. Understanding how your firm is perceived—its strengths, weaknesses, and the opportunities that exist—will give you the perspective and insights to fuel growth and drive profi tability. From evaluating how you bring products and services to market, to building and enhancing your firm’s reputation, to creating an employee experience that helps you to attract and retain talent—research is vital in laying a base for future growth. Leveraging research will help you discover new ways to win that you might not ever have considered before.
Change the lens: Many firms are stuck, and using market research is a way to create value by not only playing back what their clients, prospects, and partners see, but also by changing their lens on the situation. Sometimes that means helping it zoom out to consider the big picture or zoom in on an overlooked detail. Other times, it’s about seeing the situation from a different vantage point. For example, research can help illuminate an outside-in client perspective when you are taking an inside-out view of the market. Or, it can help flip a risk-based perspective into an opportunity based one.
Get curious: Most of the time, we rely heavily on what we already know. But there are times when we need to explore what’s below the surface and beyond our usual field of vision. In good times and in bad, we need to ask the activating questions that will get to the root causes and deeper truths. As one of our clients once put it, “just looking at the books will not tell you the full story of what’s really going on.”
Break from convention: Many firms often work within the confines of what they know and what is comfortable. Market research helps to question conventions and find a way to break from them and arrive at a new solution—one that benefits your clients and partners in new ways. It all has to start with a deep examination of the firm’s targets and clients—and the full experiences that shape them—from a fresh perspective. From there, you can develop new beliefs about the role that your firm can play with your clients. These beliefs will lead you to think in bold new ways, and then act with confidence, speed, and imagination as you uncover fresh ways to create value.
Take action: Most of our clients have shared with us that at one point or another, their organization has enjoyed great success in the past. But how can you translate that success into future leadership? We’ve seen the financial services industry change dramatically over the past several years — and the many firms that have, at times, been caught reacting rather than leading. By identifying the next frontiers where your firm can create new value, you can position the firm to navigate this terrain more nimbly and powerfully than any other company. But the only way this can happen is to take action. Make a plan and execute on it, because when you do — it can pay extraordinary dividends.
– Jillian Rudman for Money Management Letter, September 5, 2011